The use of \u201cPea eye\u201d is not meant to be inconsequential, only to be casual. \u201cP. I.\u201d is a discarded title used during the American occupation of an archipelago of islands named after a Spanish sovereign who presided over the height of the Spanish Empire, Philipp II, who later married Elizabeth and became England\u2019s King, among a few kingdoms.<\/p>\n
Historical account is not our task at the moment, nor about the mathematical pi that resembles the acronym. It is about a group tracing their genetic descent in a group of Malayan islands, all 90 million of them at home and 11 million in diaspora in every nook and cranny of the known world, and a force on Saipan by accident of history.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s celebration has to do with a declaration of independence from Spain in 1898 by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo. This is different from the July 4 granting of independence by the United States after WWII in 1946 when a people caught in the ministrations of American and Japanese military forces survived with more pride than common sense in a semblance of democracy, turning its status since 1935 as a Commonwealth of the United States into one of the first independent former colonies after WWII.<\/p>\n
To speak of the Philippines as if it were a homogenous group is to mimic imposed imperial homogeneity over a diverse people. There is nothing common between a native of Aparri and one in Tawi-Tawi, nor a maginoo in Surigao to the Ilocano in Currimao. They gathered under the same political umbrella of a sovereign that the Moro kris of Mindanao and the G-strings of Monta\u00f1osa did not acknowledge.<\/p>\n
Yet, the colorful batiks of Lanao and the brass gongs of Cotabato are sold in the public markets of San Fernando; the muezzin\u2019s call is not limited to the area of Zamboanga to Isabela, even as Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Waray of Bisaya are sounds heard in the multi-glut shops of Pagadian to Claveria, echoing tongues of traders from Davao, Naga to Sanchez Mira who wag in distant tones.<\/p>\n
The 11 million Filipinos in diaspora are all over the world, with a handful in the Northern Mariana Islands that saw a 400 percent growth from 17,000 folks in 1980 to about 66,000 in 1998. The growth came in labor pools in the economic growth by a marketing advantage of Made-in-USA labels in garments stitched by cheap imported Asian labor.<\/p>\n
In 1995, the CNMI\u2019s ethnic profile was a third Pinoy (34 out of a 100), Chamorro at 29, Chinese at almost 12, 8 of other Pacific Islanders, Carolinians at over 5, Koreans at 4, Caucasians at less than 4, Japanese at about 2 and the remaining for all others.\u00a0 Local were clearly outnumbered in the same way it is in Guam where Filipinos are a third of the populace.<\/p>\n
Precisely because they are not a homogenous social group, Filipinos are hardly a dominant group, or as money-crazed and ever-frenzied workaholics like their hard-to-satisfy Sinosphere cousins.\u00a0 They send half of their earnings home and spend the rest having a good time on wholesale price. Like unscrewing the Tanduay today.<\/p>\n
Ah, the Pinoys of Pea Eye, may their street-smart resiliency, world-wise industry, rub off on other groups this day. \u00a9 2015 Saipan Tribune<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The use of \u201cPea eye\u201d is not meant to be inconsequential, only to be casual….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2365,67,57,364],"class_list":["post-204044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-pea-eye","tag-people","tag-united-states","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}